Bioelectronics is as big a jump as ditching vacuum tubes.

President Trump says he will revive U.S. manufacturing through better trade deals and tax incentives. Others argue that America has entered a new “postmanufacturing” era. Sound familiar? In the 1970s, the U.S. had a stagnant economy, sluggish productivity, high unemployment and an auto industry threatened by the Japanese “juggernaut.” Doomsday was nigh.

But with a big boost from the Reagan tax cuts and deregulation, entirely new domains of manufacturing emerged, breathing new life into the U.S. economy in the 1980s, ’90s...